Saturday, June 3, 2017

Tangled Up in Blue Words

Words are symbols made by humans with meanings concocted by humans. If we wanted, we could replace the word apple with numbers or the word erteyu. Most individuals would reject or ignore our new apple word. Some words feel good and some feel rotten. Some start out feel good, then become dysphemisms--the euphemism treadmill. The word retard was once a euphemism. The government once made compassionate postage stamps with the words "Retarded Children" printed on them. Other words start out as dysphemisms, then are reappropriated as neutral or euphemistic, often only in specific contexts, for example, the word infidel in They Call Me Infidel. Using infidel in a different context could result in violence. Even words as unimportant as first names acquire negative or positive feelings over time. Few parents name their children Ralph or Betty anymore.

Many words--shithead and scumbag, for example--will likely remain slurs in most English fluent minds for as long as English exists.

Establishments and many others are masters of language tricks, rebranding themselves with more euphemistic words, trying to attach positive feelings to terrible ideas. James Kirchik has a new book out. I bet it seldom contains the word neoconservative, though neoconservative was once a euphemism. Neoconservative became more neutral or dysphemic in many minds due to horrific neoconservative actions. Instead, Kirchick's book contains plenty of the phrase liberal democracy, though neoconservatives regularly destroy democratic practices and much else.

One Third Way group calls itself the Progressive Policy Institute to attract unwary progressives to the Democratic Party.

Many individuals reply with demagoguery to innocently intended words. If an elderly person uses the archaic neutral word lady, colored or oriental, they can find themselves demonized. Activists don't care what individuals intend. They twist words and meanings to fit their own totalitarian causes.

A few individuals with alternative beliefs act as if they can turn dysphemisms into euphemisms. But they cannot turn them into euphemisms because they lack the media power to do so. Most whites will never support groups that label themselves white nationalist or national socialist, no matter the attached beliefs. Those two phrases are political poison. In most white minds, those phrases represent Nazism, meaning mass murder, economic cronyism, and pro-Hitlerism. It doesn't matter to political readers whether they actually support pan-Europeanism or nationalist universalism or Teddy Rooseveltism or neoclassical pan-Arcticism or self-determination universalism.

When you don't control the mass media, you should not describe your beliefs with dysphemic terms, unless you prefer losing or your beliefs really are evil. Our attachments to labels should be minuscule compared to our commitments to people and better reasoned beliefs.